A Bloody Suicide Mission
by big cheddars
Summary: A company of Storm Troopers inserting onto a battlefield, pretty much. Please please please review, I could really use some feedback on this, from people with unbiased opinions. If you read it, your're a legend in my eyes.


A/N After a night of being uploaded and me doing a bit of thinking, I've decided to tell you what really happened to Klaus Korvydae between his landing and sauntering out of the desert into a Tallarn regiment. I already have a complete plot for this story, but this was just supposed to be a teaser. So, for the rest of today, I will be working on chapter 1 of this new story (this is just the prologue and epilogue) and the prologue and chapter 1 will be up tonight after some minor revision. If any of you have read Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain books, you might recognise some similarities between Cain and Korvydae, that is intentional. I have not read the Cain books, but they intrigue me, so I created my own Commissar, wrote a back-story for him (which will remain ever private) and decided to focus on the turning point of his career. The attack on the Ork held city of Durram and the mystery surrounding it. The prologue and epilogue of that story are below. On the subject of grammar, if I comma splice, don't hold it against me, because I will hate you. I find comma splicing to be a stupid rule, and having about four clauses in a sentence is something really popular authors do all the time for dramatic effect. Therefore, if they are allowed to break the rules occasionally, so am I.

"A drop practically from orbit, into Durram, which is held completely by the enemy, with no intelligence about said enemy except that they are Orks. And we're supposed to establish an LZ, fight the enemy off and then wait for our own reinforcements to arrive, which could take days. You Storm Troopers are bloody mental."

"In the 4379th Storm Trooper Regiment, sir, you aren't considered a true veteran until you've done a proper Terminal-Velocity jump."

"Why is it called Terminal-Velocity, Sergeant?"

Because you're going in a direction. Down. And its usually terminal, sir."

"Oh, I congratulate whoever invented that moniker Sergeant, it's very sanguine."

"Thank you sir, you'd best double check those straps, I'm gonna get to my own pod now."

"Wait! Thank you Sergeant. You give 'em hell if I don't make it down, and tell your men that too. The Emperor protect you."

"Thank you sir, but you'll make it down, we all will, Emperor willing."

Klaus Korvydae tugged on the buckles which restrained him inside the drop-pod. He was in a complicated harness which he had let Sergeant Arta secure rather than trying it himself. The Sergeant took the pod next to Klaus and quickly and efficiently secured his own straps. Klaus marvelled at the Sergeant's efficiency and seeming bravery in the face of the danger looming on them. These Storm Troopers were good, but not as good as a Commissar.

Klaus had barely needed to think about their morale since he had joined them, the men were so dedicated to the Emperor they didn't let anything get them down. If they had any doubts about the operation they were about to attempt, which Klaus doubted, they didn't show them. They were damned good soldiers, though they were needlessly wasting their lives.

This operation was completely ridiculous, in Klaus' opinion. One company of Storm Troopers were going to drop to the surface in their drop-pods. Once down they were to distract the Orks long enough for an armoured column to engage the Orks' eastern flank and push them back, relieving the Troopers. Klaus didn't believe for a second that it would work, but it wasn't up to him, and an officer supposed to inspire his men wouldn't duck out a dangerous operation, so Klaus was about to attempt the most dangerous operation a soldier could perform.

"One minute to launch." Came a servitor's robotic voice over the pod's internal feed. Klaus shifted his body, so that he could check if his chainsword and bolt pistol were still secured in their holsters. He also made sure he could reach the quick-release switch by his left hand. If he landed in one piece, he could hit that button and the door would blow off and his straps would go slack. Then, hopefully, he could find some cover and wait for the Storm Troopers to clear out the enemy.

"Thirty seconds to launch." The servitor intoned, and the three inch steel cover slid onto the drop-pod. Klaus had a small viewport about a half a foot long and high, and all he could see was the corridor that the drop-pods were arrayed on each side of.

One hundred Storm Troopers were going to deep-strike in, and Klaus had guessed that probably about a quarter would die in the drop, and he doubted any of them would make it through the mission. He could imagine how the men in the drop would die, their pod would lose control, spin, flop, anything. Their braking thrusters wouldn't slow them down enough, or might even speed them up, and they would crash into the ground with a crack of disintegrating metal and a piercing scream. Klaus hadn't seen it first-hand, but the Schola taught its recruits of the horrors of war. That, and his experience on Corona had taught him how a dying man could sound. Klaus gave a nostalgic grimace, those were the days before he chose the Schola, he had never regretted it, but he did sometimes wonder how they were faring; the 356th Kartan Infantry.

He especially wondered how she was faring.

He put her out of his mind, she was either dead or still fighting somewhere, and that was seven years ago, he was a Commissar now, and he needed to focus on his company. He sent a quick prayer for everyone in the 356th to the Emperor, then took a deep breath.

"Ten seconds to drop." A human voice this time, a female rating. She would be the one who was about to pull the levers that released them. "Give 'em hell boys. Five seconds to drop."

"Four."

"Three."

"Two."

"One. Drop."

Klaus felt the judder, and the quick slithering sound of the pod falling out of its cradle in the bottom of the cruiser. He suddenly felt weightless. The drop-pods were launched in orbit, and each one contained a mini minicomputer locked onto the right target.

Through the viewport he could no longer see the inside of the ship, just an inky blackness that he knew to be space. For less than a minute he was weightless, but slowly he began to feel the pull of gravity. In an ironic display of physics, he felt his body begin to strain at the straps where gravity was trying to pull him upwards as his pod hurtled down.

There was an altimeter next to the viewpoint, and it also showed the estimated time to landing. The countdown was reading a number much smaller than Klaus would have liked. He would reach the ground in around forty seconds. The braking thrusters would only activate for the last few thousand metres, so Klaus would probably reach terminal velocity before he started to slow.

The thought of the Storm Trooper moniker for the drop brought a wry smile to Klaus' lips, and he hoped they would survive the battle, even though the mathematician in him had worked out they wouldn't.

Klaus couldn't hear anything for a while longer, and then he heard – and felt – a rumbling beneath his feet. The pod began to shake violently, and Klaus' mind catapulted. This was the moment when most pods would spin out or flip, and if the Orks had any air defences, they would be firing them now. If his pod would hit, either the shell would crack and he would asphyxiate from the lack of oxygen in the air and the speed of the fall, or it would just topple him over and he would hit the ground.

Thinking about death, Klaus' whole body began to quiver and sweat beaded on his forehead. All he could see was blue out of the viewport, all he could hear was the rumble. All he could feel was the vibration of the pod as it was buffeted by the wind. The thought of impending doom from a source he could neither control nor know about frustrated Klaus. He prayed to the Emperor, thinking up as many litanies and blessings and callings he could remember from the Schola. Despite all his training about accepting death, he didn't want to die, and Klaus was a natural fighter, he would fight right to the end just for the slightest chance of escaping death.

Fortunately, his descent seemed to be fine, the altimeter was rapidly going down and the time to landing was about twenty seconds. Klaus fingered the quick-release button, and checked his pistol and chainsword again. In the last few seconds of the drop, when most of the danger was over, his nerves steadied, and his fighting spirit began to waken. He knew how to kill Orks, and when he landed, he would kill.

The counter moved to ten seconds, and Klaus tensed his body, then relaxed it again as a tensed body would just break under the strain from landing.

Klaus could still feel the rumbling beneath him, and suddenly it intensified, through the viewport he could see the ruins of a tall building of some kind.

Afterwards, Klaus couldn't really describe the moment of impact. All he really felt from his enclosed space was a big jolt that wrenched him up savagely. He banged his head on the top of the pod, and then everything went black.

Ten days later.

Private Qasim of the 32nd Tallarn Regiment sat at an autocannon emplacement in the trenches his company was occupying. The mid-day sun beat down on him, but with his shemagh over his head and his body covered in his uniform, he was hot, but not burning. He was sat behind a barrier of sandbags, lazily sat behind the trigger mechanism for his autocannon. His loader Yakub was taking a piss somewhere behind the trench.

Qasim scratched the back of his neck, he had a spot growing there which was getting rubbed by his shemagh, he would have to put a dressing over it. He fumbled in his field kit for the plaster, then sat back up and lifted his distinctive light blue headcloth up to apply it. As he fiddled with it, his eyes unfocussed, staring blankly out to the desert with his mind concentrating on other things. As such, he only saw the approaching figure when he was a few hundred yards away.

His eyes refocussed, and he muttered a curse and scrambled back to his autocannon. The figure was still indistinct in the heat haze, but he looked tall, and thin. Qasim yelled at Yakub to get over here, and frantically yanked the ratchet back, dropping a bullet into the chamber.

The new figure didn't look like an enemy, and as he walked closer Qasim could see he was a human. When he saw the Tallarn trench, he raised a hand and waved. Qasim relaxed, "Who are you? What's your unit?"

The man walked closer, and Qasim bit his tongue in fear, the man was a Commissar! The Commissar walked up to the sandbags and stood there awkwardly, giving Qasim a look he couldn't identify.

The man was tall, and his frame was thin, but not without significant muscle on the chest and arms. The man wore the traditional epaulettes and cap of a Commissar, but over it he also wore a midnight-black trench coat which had several rips in it. Qasim recognised the trench coat as one that a Death Korps Guardsman might wear, and he wondered what the Commissar was doing here. The Commissar's coat was also stained with many dark patches which Qasim assumed to be blood. Though the Commissar didn't look wounded in any way. The only other thing about the Commissar that Qasim noticed was his unnaturally bright eyes. They were a deep blue, and as the Commissar stared silently at Qasim for several moments the Tallarn felt compelled to stare back. He felt himself beginning to drift into the depths of those eyes and they expanded until they covered his entire vision, even though the Commissar was stood six feet away.

The Commissar shifted his gaze, and Qasim's trance vanished. His mind cleared, and the Tallarn blinked. What had just happened to him? His mind dismissed it as a symptom of the sun.

The Commissar had vaulted the sandbags, and now leant on them. Yakub had joined Qasim and he seemed wary of this strange new arrival. The Commissar spoke, and Qasim was surprised to find no anger or ferocity in his tone, just a pleasant politeness. "Hello gentlemen, would either of you men like to tell me what regiment this is, and where exactly I am? I appear to have become a little lost."

"Yes... sir. You're at the lines of the 32nd Tallarn, we're currently facing an occupied Ork city in the direction you just came from, sir."

"Tallarn, eh? Good men, I've heard. Well, one of you fetch your officer pronto and then I can get off this planet. War's won now anyway."

Qasim nodded at Yakub, who was technically his subordinate as the loader, and Yakub walked off sullenly. Ordered about by someone younger than him, pah!

"He seemed rather annoyed, soldier, may I ask why?" The Commissar's tone was friendly, and Qasim answered without hesitation, even if this man seemed nice, he still had the power to execute Qasim on the spot if he seemed lacking in his duties or unwilling.

"He's just piss-, sorry, annoyed that I can give him orders because I'm younger than him, sir. I'm the gunner here, see, and that makes me in charge, but I'm only gunner because I'm a better shot."

"Ah, I see. Seems a fair system, if it were me I would just focus on becoming a better marksman so I could become gunner. Oh well, we can't all be me, can we?" The Commissar scratched his chin, which Qasim noticed was covered in a scruffy, untamed beard.

"Umm, no sir."

"Ahh, here's your captain now, it was nice to meet you, Private...?"

"Qasim, sir. "

"Quite, goodbye now, Private. Remember, the Emperor protects."

The Commissar nonchalantly walked off to Captain Shurma. Yakub walked back over to Qasim and sat himself in the sand, muttering something about 'gakking' Commissars and staring intently at the sand. Qasim stared at the Commissar as he shook hands with the Captain and the two walked off, "What in the Emperor was that all about?"

Yakub lifted his head and gave Qasim a disdainful look. "What makes you think I'd know, you sand-brain, all I know is that that uppity bastard introduced himself as 'Commissar Klaus Korvydae, formerly of the 4379th Storm Trooper Regiment'. Bah!"

"They were the ones spearheading that big attack ten days ago. I heard that a column from the 800th Cadian Armoured was supposed to reinforce them, but they got pushed back. Hang on! Formerly?"

"Yeah, he said they're all dead."


End file.
